Boring Biography

Hello!
Thankyou for taking the time to check out my website.
I hope you're enjoying checking out the small sample of the variety of work I've produced over the years!

Since you've come to this page, I guess you're interested in finding out a little bit more about who I am.

I was born in New Zealand and though I lieved for a brief time in Auckland, and then for three years in Mt Cook village in the mountains of the South Island - where I first started school, and during which time I was first exposed to Star Wars - most of my adolescence was spent in the city of Nelson from age 7 - 22.

It was there I was able to continue my passion for art, design and making home movies with my friends.
I was given my first computer - A 48K ZX Spectrum in about 1983/84 and was fascinated by the then advanced graphical animation capabilities. Though I did tinker with making images, it was very difficult as you had to plan it in advance since you could only use two colours (from a total of 16) in each 8x8 pixel portion of the screen! Loading just 48k of data used to take between3 to 5 minutes from a casette in a standard tape deck!!!

I started writing stories when I was 13 and my English teacher encouraged me to combine my passion for art and writing by illustrating a class writing project. Since then I've written hundreds of pages and made dozens of drawings and charcter designs for the story I started then and discarded almost as many as I've grown both in maturity and as a writer and artist. It's a personal tinkering project now that I come back to whenever I have time.

During my school years, I was exposed to the works of a variety of different artists, designers and visualists who still continue to inspire me. The most prominent of which would be Larry Elmore - a prominent artist for the Dungeons & Dragons game. Patrick Woodroffe - Incredible detail combined with and incredible, whimsical imagination. Michael Parks - Creator of surreal beauty. Syd Mead - Visual Futurist. Joe Johnstone - Concept artist for many of Star Wars' iconic designs.
However, it was during my studies at Nelson Polytechnic, that the combination of new inspiration (freed from the constrictive high school curriculum), new techniques learned from the Polyech tutors and my real interest in H.R. Giger's art - Creator of the famous Alien and many other works of nightmarish beauty and horror, that I really started to develop my own style of art.

From Nelson, I moved to Auckland in the early 92 to follow my passion for movie making, but the course was not everything I had hoped for and that coupled with now having to support myself in new city, led me to take a job working in Graphic Design as a production artist. This first job lasted only a few months - being fired at Christmas time is never fun - and it was some time before I was able to get another full time position, supporting myself by working freelance in the meanwhile.

This new position at a company called Image Center was originally making calendars - dull tedious work, but I learned a lot both from the job and from my co-workers and quickly moved on to doing a greater variety of jobs and gaining great experience in the print industry. While there I moved into the Graphic Design department to work on 3D animation and early web design multi-media projects. All to soon though, the company decided to invest in a new facility and the purchase of it's own printing presses, leading to staff cutbacks and I again found myself working freelance.

It had been while working there I had met my girlfriend Heidi - who owned a small cafe close to where I lived. After a few months dating, we moved in together.

Soon after, I was made redundant at the Image Center after they moved premises. I worked freelance for a while doing a variety of jobs including logo animation, logo design and magazine layout.
Then the opportunity came to move to America with Heidi, so a couple of weeks after she moved, I followed her to Los Angeles. There I quietly did a bit of freelance work, including some web design and some postcards.
I managed to obtain a work permit and was soon working for a company called Vertis in Van Nuys - a long drive from where I lived (Anywhere from 45mins to 3 hours depending on traffic). This was a fast paced production job produceing classified advertising for the three major newspapers in the city - The Los Angeles times, The Daily News and the Daily Breeze. It was also a night shift job.

During this time Heidi and I were married, I obtained my Greencard and Heidi became pregant with twins and a few months after starting at Vertis, my children Lilly and Sebastian were born at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Beverly HIlls VERY early in the morning!

Hmmm this really does waffle on a bit... better edit down a bit to something more relevant to the website.

BIOGRAPHY Hello! Thankyou for taking the time to check out my website. I hope you're enjoying checking out the small sample of the variety of work I've produced over the years! Since you've come to this page, I guess you're interested in finding out a little bit more about who I am. I was born in New Zealand and though I lieved for a brief time in Auckland, and then for three years in Mt Cook village in the mountains of the South Island - where I first started school, and during which time I was first exposed to Star Wars - most of my adolescence was spent in the city of Nelson from age 7 - 22. It was there I was able to continue my passion for art, design and making home movies with my friends. I was given my first computer - A 48K ZX Spectrum in about 1983/84 and was fascinated by the then advanced graphical animation capabilities. Though I did tinker with making images, it was very difficult as you had to plan it in advance since you could only use two colours (from a total of 16) in each 8x8 pixel portion of the screen! Loading just 48k of data used to take between3 to 5 minutes from a casette in a standard tape deck!!! I started writing stories when I was 13 and my English teacher encouraged me to combine my passion for art and writing by illustrating a class writing project. Since then I've written hundreds of pages and made dozens of drawings and charcter designs for the story I started then and discarded almost as many as I've grown both in maturity and as a writer and artist. It's a personal tinkering project now that I come back to whenever I have time. During my school years, I was exposed to the works of a variety of different artists, designers and visualists who still continue to inspire me. The most prominent of which would be Larry Elmore - a prominent artist for the Dungeons & Dragons game. Patrick Woodroffe - Incredible detail combined with and incredible, whimsical imagination. Michael Parks - Creator of surreal beauty. Syd Mead - Visual Futurist. Joe Johnstone - Concept artist for many of Star Wars' iconic designs. However, it was during my studies at Nelson Polytechnic, that the combination of new inspiration (freed from the constrictive high school curriculum), new techniques learned from the Polyech tutors and my real interest in H.R. Giger's art - Creator of the famous Alien and many other works of nightmarish beauty and horror, that I really started to develop my own style of art. From Nelson, I moved to Auckland in the early 92 to follow my passion for movie making, but the course was not everything I had hoped for and that coupled with now having to support myself in new city, led me to take a job working in Graphic Design as a production artist. This first job lasted only a few months - being fired at Christmas time is never fun - and it was some time before I was able to get another full time position, supporting myself by working freelance in the meanwhile. This new position at a company called Image Center was originally making calendars - dull tedious work, but I learned a lot both from the job and from my co-workers and quickly moved on to doing a greater variety of jobs and gaining great experience in the print industry. While there I moved into the Graphic Design department to work on 3D animation and early web design multi-media projects. All to soon though, the company decided to invest in a new facility and the purchase of it's own printing presses, leading to staff cutbacks and I again found myself working freelance. It had been while working there I had met my girlfriend Heidi - who owned a small cafe close to where I lived. After a few months dating, we moved in together. Soon after, I was made redundant at the Image Center after they moved premises. I worked freelance for a while doing a variety of jobs including logo animation, logo design and magazine layout. Then the opportunity came to move to America with Heidi, so a couple of weeks after she moved, I followed her to Los Angeles. There I quietly did a bit of freelance work, including some web design and some postcards. I managed to obtain a work permit and was soon working for a company called Vertis in Van Nuys - a long drive from where I lived (Anywhere from 45mins to 3 hours depending on traffic). This was a fast paced production job produceing classified advertising for the three major newspapers in the city - The Los Angeles times, The Daily News and the Daily Breeze. It was also a night shift job. During this time Heidi and I were married, I obtained my Greencard and Heidi became pregant with twins and a few months after starting at Vertis, my children Lilly and Sebastian were born at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Beverly HIlls VERY early in the morning! Hmmm this really does waffle on a bit... better edit down a bit to something more relevant to the website.